castration anxiety

plural castration anxieties

1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe literal or metaphorical fear of emasculation; associated with the early psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud.

   If we wonder now how easily men are threatened by women, and how the slightest expression of feminine power can generate castration anxieties in even a big man, then perhaps we would do well to think back on the origins of agriculture.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 133